


A Note Unsaid

by MagicMysticFantasy



Series: Until Dawn Stories [2]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Cannibalism, Gen, Hannah's Journal, I mean it's Until Dawn, So all the content warnings for the game apply here, Survival, Wendigo, Wendigo Hannah Washington, Wilderness Survival, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 00:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30030222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMysticFantasy/pseuds/MagicMysticFantasy
Summary: Hannah was down in the mines for nearly a month before she became a wendigo, according to her journal. The time in between journal entries is unknown, but here is an attempt to fill in the blanks.
Relationships: Beth Washington & Hannah Washington
Series: Until Dawn Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2209131
Kudos: 1





	A Note Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> So! Yet another story started two years ago that is finally finished! Ever since learning about Hannah's journal, I wanted to know more about what happened between the few entries that we get - after all, it was nearly an entire month that she was down there and it ultimately led to her becoming a wendigo herself. Here is my attempt at answering the resulting questions, so I hope you enjoy!
> 
> I know it is in the tags, but I would like to reiterate:  
> Content warnings for the game itself all apply here! There is description of injury, cannibalism, and some body horror in this story, so please be aware when reading this!

_ Day 1 _

Hannah wakes up to pain and the sudden awareness that she can’t feel her hands. She blinks with a groan, her face scrunching up at the sudden light. It takes a moment for her vision to adjust, a little blurry without her glasses, and her head is dizzy enough that it’s a struggle to lift it. All she can see at first is rock and snow, and she blinks at her surroundings in confusion.

_ The prank, running, Beth, fire, falling. _

Oh right, she fell. A while ago too, based on the fact that it’s light out again, though the snowstorm is still going. Has nobody found her yet? And what about - Beth! Beth fell too, she remembers, suddenly attempting to sit up. What happened to Beth?

She manages to get upright, her body aching and a sharp pain in her leg that makes her gasp. The vertical position makes her head spin, and she lifts her hand to where the pain is worst, inhaling sharply at the spike of pain it causes. When her fingers come away, she sees blood on them.

That’s not good, she thinks, staring at her crimson-stained hand. She lets her eyes trail away from it to the rest of her, and is then forced to close her eyes to keep from retching. Her upper left leg is at a slight angle from the mid-thigh down, and her entire leg is swollen and aching.

As if seeing it has triggered the pain receptors in her brain to start working again, a wave of agony hits her. It sends her already dizzy head reeling, and she collapses to the ground again, her vision going spotty.

Fuck, she thinks, blinking until her eyesight clears and ignoring the throbbing in her leg and head as best she can. She’s taken the same first aid courses that Sam and Mike had when they decided to try real-world rock climbing and she’d tagged along, hoping to catch his attention - even though she’d ended up quitting shortly after due to her newly-discovered fear of heights. She knows a break like this is bad, and that she’ll have to set it and maybe even walk on it if she wants to get out of here.

Beth, she needs to check on Beth still.

She makes herself sit up again, gasping with pain, and ignores the darkened edges of her vision to look for her sister. When she spots her through her blurry vision, concern and relief in equal measure rush through her. Her sister is there, but there is a pool of blood under her that is not insignificant, and from what Hannah can see her clothes are already soaked through.

“Beth?” she whispers, voice cracking as even that quiet sound makes her head pound. “Beth, wake up.”

She leans forward a little, freezing as the movement makes her dizzy again, and tries to see her sister better. She goes rigid when she does, heart filling with lead and sinking down into the stone below her. Beth isn’t breathing, her normally tanned cheeks now pale and a little waxy looking. From her new angle, Hannah can see that her torso is twisted around a little more than it should be, her spine at just enough of an unnatural angle to be alarming.

“Beth?” she asks quietly, tears filling her eyes. Her little sister is motionless, as Hannah knew she would be the moment she saw her spine. “Oh, god, Beth.”

This was all her fault, she thought, looking at her twin. If she hadn’t been so naive, hadn’t been so  _ stupid _ then run off, maybe Beth wouldn’t have followed her and she’d still be alive.

There’s snow on them both, and more snow still falling from the sky. She needs to get into the shelter of the tunnels beside them, and she can’t bear to leave Beth there but she’s too weak to move her as she is.

Hannah drags herself slowly across the ground towards the shelter of the tunnels. It takes a long time, and she’s pretty sure she passes out a few times, but eventually she makes it into shelter, instantly feeling warmer.

She stretches out, breathing heavily, her whole body throbbing. Her hand knocks into something, and she glances up to see an old journal. Curiosity breaks through the pain, and she reaches over and opens it.

The first few pages are a log of mining activity, but after that it’s blank. She blinks, before she notices a scattering of charcoal on the ground beneath a burned down torch. Following an urge she doesn’t quite understand, she stretches out to grab a thin piece of it, and puts it to the paper.

_ My little sister is dead. The fall killed her... I watched the color drain from her face. My leg is broken. I'm all alone, stuck here with Beth's body. Someone will come soon. _

She stares at the last sentence she wrote. Someone will come, they have to. Someone will find her and Beth, and she’ll be able to be home with her parents and brother again. Someone will come, she thinks, finally succumbing to unconsciousness.

_ Day 2 _

When Hannah wakes up again, it’s dark out, but she can somehow tell that it’s not the same day. It’s also colder than before, and she feels that she has curled up into herself a little, even in her unconscious state. She can’t remember being so cold, or in so much pain.

She groans, levering herself up a bit before biting off a yell of pain. She glances down at her leg again and sees that it has swelled up even more than before. Her skin is bruised a dark purple, and she has no idea about what to do about fixing it. The first aid they’d been taught in the rock climbing class was focused on cuts and scrapes - how to keep people from dying while waiting for paramedics to arrive, nothing this serious.

You’re supposed to set bones, she thinks queasily, looking at her crooked femur.

She swallows heavily, slowly reaching to place her hands on either side of her leg, hands just barely brushing the sides where her leg is a little crooked. Oh god, she’s really going to have to do this, isn’t she?

Hannah’s fingers brush her skin, and even that much pressure makes a whimper rise in her throat. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, trying to steel her nerves. A quick movement, straighten out the crook. Don’t linger, just shift the bone back into place.

She’s so nauseous she’s about to throw up, but she knows she has to do this. Not letting herself think about it, she opens her eyes, grips just below the crook in her leg firmly, and snaps her hands straight.

A scream leaves her throat, even as she collapses onto the ground, eyes rolling back as she falls back into oblivion.

_ Day 3 _

It’s light out when Hannah comes to again, and her head feels a lot better than before, even if she feels just as cold as ever. She blinks a little, and lifts her head to look around.

The snowstorm has ended, she thinks, listening to the lack of howling wind and no longer seeing snow falling. Glancing back towards Beth, she sees her sister fully covered in a blanket of snow.

The sight hurts, but she knows there’s nothing she can do. Any movement at all will make her pass out, based on the past few times she’s tried. Still, she shifts a little to sit up more, to begin taking stock of her surroundings.

There is a tunnel to her right, and a sheer cliff to her left. Other than that, there is nothing but the occasional leftover box and burned down torch. There is nothing here, she has nothing. Her only hope is for someone to find her, because she can’t move.

At that thought, she feels tears begin to well up, and she can’t help but sob, pressing her face into her hands and curling up as much as she can until pain twinges through her again. She cries and cries, both for her sister and for herself, until exhaustion pulls her under again.

_ Day 4 _

Her eyes are swollen when she wakes up the next day, but it’s the thirst that really pulls her awake. Hannah can’t be sure, but she’s pretty sure the last time she had something to drink was… close to three days ago? Thankfully there’s plenty of snow after the snowstorm. She needs water more than anything right now, and the thirst has even overridden the growing hunger and the pain in her leg.

Speaking of her leg…

She glances down at it and sees that while it is still clearly injured, some of the swelling has gone down with the bone back in place, no doubt helped along by the freezing temperatures. Hannah looks at it carefully, and realizes that she probably will have to splint it soon. Maybe with it splinted, she can even manage to move around a bit more.

Scanning her surroundings, she sees the wooden boxes left behind when the mine closed. The thought of dragging herself closer makes Hannah blanch, but the idea of trying to stand or crawl is so much worse. She eyes the nearest box and slowly shifts her weight forward.

Agony shoots through her leg, but she grits her teeth and carefully pulls herself across the ground towards it. It takes far longer than she thinks it should, but eventually she is beside it, out of breath and dizzy with pain.

Hannah lets herself catch her breath for a moment, then sits upright and begins figuring out the best method of breaking apart the box.

_ Day 5 _

Snow has piled up in the hole she fell through. Hannah had eaten some of it yesterday night after she’d splinted her leg and slowly dragged her way over. She hadn’t been able to do much more than that without pain turning her vision fuzzy, and even splinting her leg and moving that short distance was enough to set her stomach turning.

Beth is somewhere under that snow pile, Hannah knows. Today, with her leg splinted, her thirst mostly sated, and a little more energy, she thinks she wants to move her. Keep her - her…  _ remains _ away from the elements.

Dragging herself to the edge of the tunnels is easier now than it ever had been before, even with pain spiking through her leg at every movement. The splint helps, and the swelling has gone down - both of which make things easier. It still hurts.

She makes it to the snow pile where they had fallen, and reaches cold hands out to brush away the snow as best she can with her limited movement. She can feel her muscles trembling from the freezing temperature now that she’s more exposed. The mine shaft is cold but still sheltered from the wind and elements. Here, there is nothing but sky above, leaving her more exposed than she has been since the fall.

As soon as she reveals Beth, she realizes that she won’t be able to move her. She can barely move herself, much less another person at this point. She lowers her head to her chilled hands, fighting back a sob of frustration and grief. 

Hannah can’t  _ do _ anything. She can’t get out of here, she can’t get Beth out from under the snow. She can’t even  _ crawl _ . She presses her hands even harder to her face at the thought, and that’s when Hannah realizes that her hands are shaking.

She drops her hands and sees that they are pale and trembling before her, and that’s when she feels the tremors wracking her body. It’s so much colder here than where she’s been curling up to rest. It’s only just barely January - not quite the holidays anymore, though classes are still let out for winter break. Blackwell Mountain is going to get even colder from here on out - January has always been the coldest month here, if Hannah is remembering right.

Her eyes slide to Beth.

The idea of removing the sweater from her is awful, but Hannah is going to die if she doesn’t. She’s only dressed in only her jeans, a blouse, and Beth’s winter coat. She’s going to freeze up here if she isn’t careful, and even though the idea is abhorrent, Beth no longer needs the extra layer.

She reaches out with shaking hands and begins working the sweater off her sister’s frozen body. It’s hard - her own difficulties in moving, the snow, and the stiffness of Beth’s body all working together to make it tricky to get it off of her. But, after a long time and a lot of tears and frustration, she’s left with another potential layer of clothing.

Not letting herself think about it too much after that, and ignoring the rust-red stains across the fabric, she quickly removes her coat, sliding the freezing sweater on before putting her coat back on. Hannah sits and shivers for a few moments, before her body manages to warm up the cloth and air inside her layers again. It’s much warmer with the added layer, and a tension she hadn’t even been aware of releases from her shoulders.

Hannah turns and tucks snow back around Beth as best she can with stiff fingers, before pulling herself back into the shelter of the tunnels. She moves slowly and painfully until she’s propped up by the wall. The empty journal she’d found was nearby, and she reached out to grab it and the thin piece of charcoal she’d written with before.

_ I've never been so HUNGRY. It feels like my stomach is twisting around inside. I took Beth's sweater. Much warmer now. She's still looking out for me. _

Hannah tosses both aside when she’s done, tipping her head back against the stone wall and trying not to cry.

_ Day 6 _

The day starts with hunger. Hannah has never gone more than half a day without eating before, and now it’s been at least several. With her pain at manageable levels again, her core back at a decent temperature, and the snow to quench her thirst, hunger is really the only thing left for her body to focus on.

It’s also one of the only things she’s going to struggle to fix.

She’s trapped in a narrow tunnel, her leg keeping her from following them out of the mines and a sheer icy cliff keeping her from climbing out the way she went in. The only access she’ll have to food for the foreseeable future is anything in the immediate area. So, with that in mind, she painstakingly begins to look through the half-rotted wooden boxes around her.

The first two hold nothing but a few spare mining tools, and Hannah begins to fear that they all will. It’s as she’s opening the third one that she sees a glimmer behind it. It takes more effort than she’d prefer with her busted leg, but she manages to shift the box aside enough to reach behind it.

It’s a small handful of forgotten granola bars - long expired, but still sealed against the surrounding environment. To Hannah, this looks like a treasure trove.

Her first instinct is to eat them all, her stomach feeling like it’s ripping itself apart after days without eating. Logic tells her not to though - to ration what she has so it will last her longer, just in case. Her family and friends will find her, but that’s no reason to be stupid in the meantime.

She forces herself to only open one, and to savor the taste of oats so stale they almost taste like dust. This is all she’ll have for a while yet, and she knows to be grateful for it.

Her mind wanders to try and ignore the food, and she thinks about how long she’s been down here. It’ll get harder to keep track of the days soon, and she’d like to know, even when she gets rescued. Hannah’s eyes fall on the journal and charcoal.

Opening it to the very last page, she hovers the charcoal above the paper, casting her mind back. She’s pretty sure this is - day six, already? It’s unsettling to think about how long she’s already been here, so Hannah hurriedly adds six tick marks to the final page and sets both aside.

She’ll be out of here soon, she tells herself firmly.

_ Day 7 _

Hannah begins her day by eating her granola bar and making a tally in the back of her journal. It’s weird to see that a week down in this hole has already passed by, but she supposes that the weather is making it hard for rescuers to find them.

Not allowing herself to eat anything else, there isn’t much more to do. She doesn’t want to waste the pages of the journal, since Hannah doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be here. However, sitting around all day and sleeping are both getting old really fast. Her eyes drift around, looking for something to occupy her attention, and they land on the small mound of charcoal where she’d gotten her writing stick from.

Shuffling her way over to it, she picks out a decently sized piece. The walls are too high with her messed up leg, but the floor should be fine for her purposes. She presses the piece of charcoal lightly to the ground and drags, leaving a thick line behind.

The rest of the day passes in a mixture of boredom and drawing in turn, and Hannah can’t help but think that this is the most normal day she’s had so far.

_ Day 8 _

The stale granola bars are gone as soon as she finishes the one allotted to today. She knows she should be worried, but she  _ knows _ she won’t be here much longer. It’s been eight days now, and it can’t take much longer for her family to find her.

One day, she’ll be able to talk about the time she ate decades-old granola bars in a cave without being filled with grief and guilt over Beth, and without being hungry, tired, and in pain. She thinks about telling Josh about the mines, and about telling their parents about the journal. Hannah thinks about meals of tall sandwiches and potato chips, hearty bowls of soup, and trashy fast food.

She thinks about Beth, and about the holiday cookies they made every year. They’d make so many batches that the kitchen smelled like sugar for days, and they’d spend an entire day decorating them before giving some of them to their friends. Hannah is pretty sure they’d brought some with them to the lodge this year, and that their group of friends somehow hadn’t finished them yet.

Thinking about her friends makes her think of giddy excitement, a forged note, smothered giggles and a video camera. It makes her think of humiliation, and she forcibly closes her eyes and tries to sleep, unwilling to think about things any more.

_ Day 9 _

Hannah keeps her mind away from things with a stubbornness that Beth would have been proud of in other circumstances. She eats a few handfuls of snow with fingers stiff from the cold and lets her mind drift. However, halfway through the day even she can’t deny reality any longer.

It’s been more than a week, and she needs to start planning for the longer-term, even if she’s still holding out hope that her brother and her parents will find where they fell. Long term, she’ll need access to food and ideally, the ability to stand even for just short periods of time. If nobody has come by tomorrow, she’ll start trying to find a way to go through the tunnels.

_ Day 10 _

The first thing Hannah does upon waking today is decide that she needs to check and see if there is more food. Her leg gives her limited movement, making it take a lot more effort and energy than it should, but she needs to know if she has more resources than she thought.

She drags herself from box to box, tipping the ones she can and straining to see inside the others. There are more mining tools and a few leftover chunks of what must be tin, based on her memory of what the mines were for back when they were still working. Aside from that, there’s nothing - no expired granola bars, no forgotten snacks full of preservatives, nothing.

It takes hours to sort through the ten or so boxes left. Dragging herself on the ground is, surprisingly, not exactly the most mobile way to get places and is overall really painful. It is also hard to maneuver the lids off the crates from the ground, and even harder to search inside of them. The result is that Hannah is exhausted after searching all the boxes - the tricky task and the lack of calories both sucking the energy from her limbs.

At least she knows now that she really is out of food, she thinks as she begrudgingly lays down to sleep, worn out and frustrated by her lack of progress.

_ Day 11 _

Being unable to walk is the biggest problem that she has, Hannah knows. If she could figure out a way to walk instead of dragging herself across the ground, so many possibilities would open up. Hell, even crawling would be better than what she is currently capable of.

None of the boxes are tall enough to use their planks as crutches, unfortunately, and she has nothing to keep more than one plank connected together well enough to jerry-rig a crutch for herself. But, she thinks, glancing at the cave walls, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any other ways she could maybe get support while trying to walk.

She shuffles over to the opposite side of the tunnel so that her busted left leg is closest to the wall when she faces deeper into the tunnel. Bracing a hand on it, she tries to lever herself up to a standing position. Her arm shakes so much that she nearly falls into the wall with her bad leg, and it’s only luck that she manages not to.

Considering the problem of her own weakened strength, she studies the wall and her surroundings. Hannah’s eyes catch on a small notch in the wall a few feet behind her, and then on the crate right nearby it. She shuffles backward until she’s below the notch, then reaches up and hooks her fingers in it.

It takes a few tries, but eventually she’s using her shaking hold on the wall to pull herself fully upright. Just as her left arm is beginning to become fatigued with the effort, she gets high enough that she can use her right hand to brace herself on the nearby crate, and she succeeds in standing upright for the first time in over a week.

The blood rush from suddenly standing has her nearly fainting, and she collapses to the ground again. Her vision goes white as her broken femur collides painfully with the ground, and she isn’t entirely sure she doesn’t pass out. A few moments later she comes back to awareness, panting from the previous pain.

Hannah is warier now of trying to stand, but she knows she needs to see if it is possible to move. So she gets in position again and hauls herself up one last time, going as slow as she can to try and prevent another blood rush, even as she does her best to move fast enough to actually succeed in standing.

It’s shaky at first, but after a moment of adjustment, she is standing once more. She takes a few wobbly hops forward, sliding her hand along the wall for support as she tests her movement. Hannah can already tell that hopping will be exhausting in her state, but with her movement returned for the first time in days, she can’t help but feel hopeful. In preparation for searching the tunnels, she decides to save as much of her energy as possible for tomorrow.

_ Day 12 _

Hannah hops carefully down the tunnel, taking her time moving and occasionally stopping to lean against the walls to rest. Progress is frustratingly slow, but it’s still the first progress she has had in almost two weeks so it’s worth it even if it’s sapping all of her energy.

Eventually she reaches an underground lake where she has to pick a direction, left or right. This much activity has already exhausted her, and she can feel her good leg beginning to shake from the exertion of hopping as far as she has. She’ll only be able to explore in one direction, so she’ll have to hope she picks correctly.

She bites her lip, glancing between the two options. There’s no light or wind from either to indicate a way out of the tunnels, and there’s no way she can swim with her busted leg - not to mention how cold the water will be, and she has no way to warm up again afterward. Sighing, she decides to go left so that she doesn’t need to switch walls and can keep leaning on the one she currently is using as support.

Wandering her way to the left, it doesn’t take long for her to see what’s in the area that she’s picked. The tunnel leads to a dead end, and around the area are some collapsed boxes that have rotted away, as well as a few abandoned tools.

Hannah checks the space anyway, holding out hope for some old granola bars again, but even her hopes aren’t high that she’ll find anything. Frustrated at the wasted effort, she almost decides to go back to what she considers ‘her’ area, until she realizes that if she sleeps here then she’ll have less distance to go tomorrow, assuming she can manage to get standing again.

Scanning the walls, she thinks she sees a place where she can haul herself up, and with that she decides to spend the night in the new tunnel. It’s an uneasy sleep she falls into, the mines echoing strangely this deep in, and some part of her instincts are on alert the entire night.

_ Day 13 _

She decides to get an early start in going to the right path. There’s a brief moment where she has to hop unsupported across the tunnel as she switches pathways, but after a heart-stopping moment where she almost falls, she’s successfully starting down the new pathway.

This pathway is a dead end too, but this one is different in that it’s empty. Something about the walls look different here, though, and she hobbles her way closer to see. The dim lighting makes it hard to see, but she runs her fingers over the damp wall and feels something a little soft and slimy.

Algae.

Hannah’s mind begins to turn over that information. She knows from her university courses that algae can be highly toxic to animals if consumed, but also that there are kinds that are safe to eat - and even beneficial, since they can be very similar to seaweed. Even some of the toxic ones are fine to eat for the short-term, so the question she has to answer is if it’s worth the risk to try and eat this particular algae.

She stands there weighing the pros and cons of it all until her stomach clenches again painfully. Hannah knows that her judgement is probably questionable at the moment, after days of being hungrier than she’s ever been before while being chilly and in pain. But she also knows that she needs all the food she can get, even if that food turns out to be disgusting wall algae.

Reaching out a shaky hand, she slides her fingers over the algae and tries to pry some of it off the wall. She gets a long, mushy string of it and nearly gags. Bracing her shoulder against the wall, she pinches her nose shut, takes a deep breath, and drops it into her mouth.

Her body rebels against it almost immediately. The stringy and gritty texture of it, the subtle slime, all of it. She has to breathe hard through her open mouth for a long couple moments as she does her best not to throw up. Hannah forces herself to grind the string between her teeth until it’s just a blob of mush. It takes a lot of work to make herself swallow it, and she shudders as it goes down.

She’s a little tempted to eat more of it for the sake of filling her stomach, even as gross as it is, but common sense tells her to wait until tomorrow to see if it is harmful. Part of her wants to wait for tomorrow here, so that she doesn’t have to hop her way back and waste energy, but she was too unnerved by the mines last night to be okay with doing it again, so she decides that she’ll come back tomorrow if she’s okay.

_ Day 14 _

The ‘mush’ doesn’t seem to have immediately poisoned her overnight, so Hannah decides that it’s safe enough to eat again. She hops her way back and scans what remains, deciding that she can probably afford to eat a fourth of what remains, given that there isn’t a lot left.

It’s a process, to say the least, to scrape the mush off the walls and make herself eat it. The texture is disgusting, and the taste isn’t much better, and she’s left feeling queasy and like she’s just spent the last while licking the cave wall.

Her energy is still low after so long with so little food, and she’s even more exhausted after the process of forcing herself to eat something that she  _ does not _ want to eat. It takes the rest of her energy to make it back to her sleeping place, and she sinks to the floor completely worn out.

_ Day 15 _

The mush run takes less time today, her body regaining a bit of energy thanks to the mush she’d eaten the previous day and the time eating less now that she’s beginning to get used to eating the revolting food source.

When she gets back, she feels like she has energy again for the first time in days, and her eyes inevitably drift back to where Beth is buried in the snow. It’s painful to think about her, and Hannah has been focusing on her own survival as much as possible to avoid thinking about her sister’s death.

Beth would still be alive if it wasn’t for her - Hannah knows this like she knows her leg hurts. If she hadn’t been such an idiot that night and then run off into the woods, then Beth wouldn’t have followed her and gotten caught up in everything that happened after that.

Leaving her sister under the snow while she was still injured and figuring out how to survive was painful but acceptable. Now that she’s beginning to heal and somewhat figuring things out, it feels wrong to leave her there anymore.

Taking stock of her surroundings, Hannah eyes the boxes and works to break off a plank from one of them. There’s a small patch of dirt a little ways into the tunnels and she drags herself over to start hacking away at the frozen ground.

_ Day 16 _

Hannah hurries through today’s quarter of the mush, feeling the same energy as yesterday. She makes her way back to her home base and picks up the plank, working to finish up the shallow hole she’d dug yesterday. It doesn’t take long to finish it, and she pauses, looking at the indentation and feeling almost solemn.

After a moment, she hauls herself to her foot again, hobbling her way as best she can over to where Beth is buried in snow. Lowering herself carefully to the ground, she drags herself over to the snow pile and begins brushing it away. Beth’s face comes into view, greyer and waxier than it was when she last saw it, but surprisingly still normal-looking due to the snow.

It takes a lot for Hannah to force herself to wrap a hand around her sister’s stiff arm and pull. Until that moment, she’s not sure she realized just how heavy a deadweight - she winces a little at her own internal wording of that - human was. A hundred plus pounds of human doesn’t sound too bad, until it comes time to move it on your own.

Moving Beth is hard, and involves a creative mixture of dragging herself and her sister across the floor as best she can. It takes a lot longer to get her over to the shallow grave than she’d prefer, but eventually they are both there and Hannah is carefully maneuvering her into the hole.

The first handful of dirt dropped over her sister’s body is the hardest. Then it gets easier with each following handful until it’s time for the dirt to cover Beth’s face. Hannah stares at her sister’s features, before closing her eyes and dropping another handful of dirt into the hole. She reaches blindly for another and another, until she has enough courage to open her eyes and look.

Beth is now fully obscured by earth, and now it’s easier for Hannah to finish. She covers her entirely, patting the earth down securely when she’s done. Something still feels missing when she’s done, and Hannah frowns at the new grave site, until she realizes what it is.

_ Oh _ .

Hannah reaches out to the plank she’d used to dig the grave and snaps it in two after a bit of creative bending. She picks up a nearby loose rock and scrapes the name  _ Beth _ into one of the halves over and over again until the word is clear - or as clear as she can make it with her slightly-blurry vision due to her broken glasses. Looking around, she remembers a box with the tools she needs.

Going to get them, she pries a few rusted nails out of a broken crate with an old hammer, then secures the two pieces of wood together in a rough cross shape with them. Putting the tools back, she drags her way back over to her twin’s new grave and drives the cross into the dirt. Grief hits her again, and she bows her head over her little sister’s grave.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, voice hoarse from disuse as tears run down her face. “I’m so sorry, this is all my fault.”

_ Day 17 _

The mush is finished today, the cave walls empty now of the horrific food. She’ll have to try and explore again to find more, but her leg still won’t take any of her weight and Hannah knows it will be an ordeal to get anywhere.

She woke up especially thirsty too, and ate extra snow to make up for the fluids she lost crying yesterday. She’s still skirting her sister’s grave, avoiding looking at it too much despite everything that happened the day before. Hannah would consider drinking from the lake, but that’s stagnant water in an underground mine - she’s not risking ingesting the radium the mine was known for in addition to tin, or the heavy metals often present in water from mines, especially with snow right there.

Hannah also can’t help but worry about whether or not there will even be more algae further in. It’s still a plant, and plants need at least some sunshine to grow. She’d nearly reached the limits of the light the other day, and exploring any further will be more difficult, as well as likely fruitless, but she has to try or she’ll starve. 

_ Day 18 _

Her explorations turn up nothing. There is only the path to the right and the path to the left, and the lake itself. Her leg won’t even let her put her foot on the ground without aching, much less swim. Hell, even holding it off the ground is an exercise in pain tolerance, since the muscles of her thigh clenching around the bone make it hurt too.

While swimming might make it easier to keep it lifted without using her muscles as much, there’s no way she can move through the water like that - and that’s assuming it’s even deep enough to help her along the entire way. If she gets into the water only to find out it gets shallow before she has a new support to lean on, she’ll be stuck as well as soaked in freezing water.

Right now, all she can do for the day is try and conserve what little energy she has remaining as she tries to figure out what to do now.

_ Day 19 _

According to the tallies in the journal, it’s been nineteen days and there’s been no sign of rescue. She doesn’t know if the rescuers passed by while she was unconscious at the very beginning or if they’ve just been looking in the entirely wrong places, but it’s been nearly three weeks with no sign of them.

Munching on snow to stay hydrated, Hannah ignores her freezing fingers and tries to think through her options. There’s the obviously bad choice of swimming in the hopes that it leads out somewhere and not ending in a solid rock wall. There’s also the choice of staying here and waiting for rescue.

Neither option sounds good, since neither has a very likely chance of success. But most survival shows and books about people getting stranded recommend staying close to the place you were stranded, right? To make it easier for people to find you?

She’s not entirely sure how accurate all of that is, but it’s the best she’s got right now, trapped as she is. Hannah tries to conserve her energy, and does her best to drown out the thoughts that seem more and more likely: that nobody is coming, and she’s going to die here.

_ Day 20 _

The lack of food is catching up to her again, her body rebelling now that it’s not even getting the algae anymore - especially after all the energy she burned burying Beth, though she can’t bring herself to regret doing it. She’s been way below the calories she’s been needing to eat for nearly three weeks now, and Hannah knows that she’s beginning to resemble a skeleton. Even though the granola and the mush have helped, none of it was substantial enough to make up for the multiple days of nothing, given that neither was more than a small meal’s worth of food at the most.

She knows her mind is beginning to drift again, and even eating snow today feels like a chore for her tired body. It’s getting harder and harder to convince herself that she’s okay - that she’s  _ going _ to be okay.

Planning to conserve energy, she lays on the floor as curled up as she can get, drifting in and out of consciousness and half-dreaming about memories of her friends and family.

_ Day 21 _

It’s a last ditch effort to be proactive in her survival, but she hops her way back into the left tunnel again, checking every inch of the walls for mush. She has to stop multiple times on the way there to rest, and even once or twice while checking for algae. By the time she gets back, she’s out of breath and dizzy, laying down as soon as she can.

Deep down, she knows it’s not good that she’s this far gone already. Hannah has a feeling that at the three week marker, her body passed some kind of turning point, beginning to give up after three weeks with very little sustenance to keep it going.

Laying down on the ground as she is, it doesn’t take long for her to slip into unconsciousness, her body automatically trying to hold onto what little energy it still has.

_ Day 22 _

Part of her feels like there isn’t much point in getting up today. She has no food and no way out. There’s no reason to go anywhere, and every time she tries she gets weaker and weaker. It’s a waste of calories and energy to try and do anything.

Her family should have found her by now, if they were going to. Hannah knows this. It’s been more than three weeks, and this is a single mountain. It shouldn’t have taken this long for her to be found, unless they think she and Beth were killed by the flamethrower man, or kidnapped, or something along those lines. Whatever it is, they aren’t looking for her in a tunnel at the bottom of a cliff.

She’s been trying to stay hopeful this whole time, through the rough days, the painful moments, the ever-present hunger. She’s been forcing herself not to think too seriously about the what-ifs, but here and now, with a gnawing void in her stomach and skeletal limbs shaking from weakness, she can’t help but finally let those what-ifs fully in.

_ Day 23 _

She has a hard time opening up her eyes when she comes to awareness. Hannah lays in stillness for what feels like an age, feeling her bony limbs press into the hard floor painfully, but unable to make herself care until hours have passed. She finally rolls off of her side and onto her back, dully registering the painful twinge in her leg.

Going through the motions, she pulls herself up enough to hobble her way to the snow, staring at the white powder for a long moment before swallowing several handfuls. Even that much is exhausting, and she makes her way back to the place she’d been sleeping. Laying down and closing her eyes again, Hannah can’t seem to bring herself to care that she’s doing worse and worse as the days stretch on.

_ Day 24 _

Hannah forces herself to get up and hop down the tunnel to check the walls for more mush. Nothing has grown back yet, probably too cold still for it to grow quickly. All she can feel is the barest stirrings of disappointment before she staggers back to her home wall and collapses on the ground.

She eats a couple of handfuls of fresh snow and lays down. In the back of her mind, she thinks that it would take a lot to get her to stand back up again, at this point.

_ Day 25 _

All she has the energy to do today is eat a handful of snow. It makes her stomach clench from both the cold and the reminder of the emptiness, but at least it’s something. She closes her eyes and sleeps.

_ Day 26 _

She eats another handful of snow and daydreams. She thinks about food almost constantly now, when she has the energy to do more than lie there in numbness. Her mom’s homemade mac and cheese. The superfood salad from that place she and Sam like to go to. The pumpkin muffins their university sells in the fall. The pork roast her dad and Beth would make out on the grill in the summer.

Hannah’s eyes drift towards Beth’s grave unconsciously at the memory. There’s a stirring in the back of her brain ( _ ‘your lizard hindbrain’ _ Sam whispers to her memories) at the sight of it. It makes her nervous, so she closes her eyes to sleep again to make herself stop daydreaming.

_ Day 27 _

The grave is constantly in her awareness today, no matter how much she tries to tell herself otherwise. She forces herself not to look at it, instead eating her snow from bony fingers and trying not to look at how thin her arms have gotten. She barely feels human anymore. She has nothing to eat, hasn’t bathed in weeks, almost never has to use the bathroom anymore, and knows she looks like a walking skeleton.

Her eyes flick towards the grave as she gets lost in thought, and she stares at it for a long moment, before catching herself. Abruptly she rolls over so her back is to it, though it feels like her awareness of it is boring a hole in her skull. She shifts so that the bony press of her ribs against the stone floor and the slow ache of her femur are distracting enough for her to sleep again.

_ Day 28 _

Today she can’t take her eyes off the grave, even if she refuses to think about why she’s staring at it, about what her survival instincts are screaming at her to do. Even her snow today can’t distract from the gaping void that is her stomach. It’s constant pain now - has been for weeks. She’s dying, she knows she is. Somehow the help she’s been hoping for hasn’t reached her, hasn’t managed to find where she and Beth fell.

She stares, and feels shame even as she refuses to think about why she’s staring.

_ Day 29 _

There’s no escaping her thoughts today. She knows why she’s staring at the grave. She feels disgust at the idea, disgust at herself, but can’t deny the thoughts any longer. She is going to die if she doesn’t do something, and the solution is buried in the frozen ground only feet away from her.

Is she even allowed to consider that as an option? Does she even have the right? Beth has watched out for her for years. Would she consider this a betrayal or further help? Will it even matter if she can’t deny her own instinct to survive?

She doesn’t eat any snow today, too focused on her sister’s grave and her own internal dilemma.

_ Day 30 _

If she had anything at all to throw up, it would have already left her stomach. Her nails are grimy from dirt, and broken from where she pried at the frozen ground to try and get at her sister’s body. Now she hacks away at the earth with the broken end of the wooden cross she’d used to mark the grave.

This is more energy than she’s had in days, if not weeks. The promise of another meal sending her hindbrain into overdrive, filling her system with the last dregs of adrenaline and energy. She sees something other than dirt and pauses. If she does this, there’s no going back. But her hand is already reaching out, and her instincts are screaming so loud she’s surprised they’re not audible.

The flesh is frozen and rotting, but it’s real sustenance for the first time in a month and her body is singing even as her mind roils in shame, disgust, and horror. She eats until she can force herself to stop, afraid her shriveled stomach will actually burst at the sudden fullness.

She crawls away, unable to look at the grave anymore, and leans against the wall while closing her eyes. She doesn’t know how long she sleeps for, but when she wakes up, she opens her eyes to her sister’s desecrated grave and feels sick. She can’t stand the feeling of her own skin, wants to throw up everything to rid it from her body. But her body is a traitor, and after weeks of starvation, her hindbrain has full control right now. It refuses to give up food, no matter how shameful and guilty the food makes her feel.

For the first time in ages, she grabs the thin journal and stick of charcoal and writes, almost beyond tears anymore, but eyes wet all the same.

_ I’m sorry Beth. I have no choice. I’m DYING. It’s the only way I can survive anymore. If someone finds this, I’m SORRY. I had to. I had no choice. Forgive me Beth. I’m sorry. _

She tosses the journal aside, and can’t bring herself to eat any snow today. She rolls onto her side and finally manages to cry herself to sleep, knowing that when she next wakes, she’ll eat again.

_ Day 31 _

She keeps her eyes closed as she eats today. Gags with every bite but keeps eating. She’s already tainted by the act, she can’t deny what she’s done - what she’s doing. If she gets rescued after this, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to look anyone in the eye again. She doesn’t know if she can even be normal after this.

In an attempt to forget what she’s doing, she faces away from the head of the grave. It’s easier to pretend her hands are reaching for an animal when she can’t see the accusing gaze beneath the broken wooden cross.

She eats several handfuls of snow later, attempting to wash the taste from her mouth. Avoiding looking at the grave, she forces herself to think about the betrayal of her own humanity for a single moment. Her body won’t let her stop eating, otherwise she would. But consuming all of what’s left of Beth - she can’t. She just can’t.

When she involuntarily glances over to the grave, her sister’s glazed eyes stare at her. She flinches, feeling the all too familiar gaze remind her of her own humanity and ethics. Everything but the head, she decides in that moment. If she has to betray everything - her morals, her humanity, her sister - if she has to betray that all, then let that gaze remind her of everything she’s lost. Let it remind her of society, of her sister, of being more than a stomach and a brain.

When she inevitably eats everything else, let it serve as a reminder, for as long as she can.

_ Day 32 _

Her skin feels stretched as she eats. Her leg is taking more of her weight today, and she thinks she can maybe start walking carefully in the next couple of days. With the sudden fuel, even the tunnels seem a little warmer today, though her hands do hurt more than they did before. She guesses it’s pins and needles, even if it’s oddly focused on her fingernails. Now that her body has energy again, maybe she’s finally starting to warm up again.

Though her energy is up, her mind feels strangely scattered. She keeps thinking she hears noises in the caves now, though she knows it’s just the wind echoing. She’s distracted and restless all day, itching to move in a way she hasn’t since the beginning.

Despite this though, she’s unsettled, unable to rid herself of the uneasy feeling scuttering up her spine when she turns her back to the mines. She does her best to push past it, unable to make herself think on it more than that.

She forces her mood to lift as best she can, faking a smile and pretending that things will be fine - as if with her leg healing, maybe she’ll finally be able to climb out or walk out of here and get help. She wants to see her parents and her brother more than anything right now, and her sister though it isn’t possible, even if she doesn’t let herself think about them too long these days.

Her smile stretches tight across her face, and she forces it to remain as she eats a handful of snow and curls up against the wall.

_ Day 33 _

Hannah’s hands are on fire when she wakes up, and her first thought goes to frostbite. She opens her eyes, her hands tucked against her chest defensively, and she uncurls herself enough to look at them.

There are thick lines of blood covering the tips of her fingers, dripping down them across her hands. It’s alarming, but they haven’t changed color as far as she can tell, so she feels comfortable enough to use a bit of snow to clean the blood away.

When she does, she freezes, staring incredulously at her fingertips.

Her fingernails are no longer there, and a quick glance at the ground shows them scattered around her on the ground, small and bloodied. Small nubs are peeking out of her nail beds where they used to be, ruthlessly sharp when she prods at them and drawing a pinprick of blood from where she touched them.

She stares at the nubs ( _ claws _ , her mind whispers darkly), and she feels like panic is creeping up on her. Everything else she hadn’t let herself think about until now - her tight skin, her fixed leg, her sudden comfort in the cold, the hunger that only seems to get worse the more she eats, the way her gums have been aching, the way her eyes hurt - comes together in a horrifying picture.

For the first time since she committed her monstrous act against Beth, she picks up the journal, hands shaking as she grabs a nearby piece of charcoal and writes down her scared, scattered thoughts.

_ My hands feel unclean. _

_ My nails fell out PUSHED OUT _

_ I am aching but no more COLD NO PAIN _

_ I am getting stronger!! _

She hesitates adding that last sentence, but decides to leave it in. She is getting stronger, as much as it horrifies her. She can feel the power of her muscles growing by the hour now that she’s paying attention, and the pain from her messed up leg is almost gone. The book and charcoal are dropped as she backs away from everything to curl up in a corner and try to shut up the sounds from the tunnels and the whispering in her brain.

She’s becoming a monster, she thinks fuzzily, one to match her monstrous act.

_ Day ?? _

She’s supposed to do something with the book. She knows this, somewhere in the clear moments that are coming less and less frequently. Clarity comes like trying to tune into a radio station surrounded by mountains - fritzy and with the occasional clear lines of a song, but mostly static.

She’s supposed to do something with the book.

Markings fill it, meaningless. She blinks, and they form words. Charcoal, she needs charcoal. What is she supposed to do with it? There are markings in the book. Words. She’s supposed to write with the charcoal.

Who is she writing to? She’s supposed to write. There is nothing left to eat anymore. She’s so hungry, and there’s no more food. Her stomach is clawing at her again to eat. To find more food.

No, not food. Beth.

Her eyes flick towards the head, greying and lifeless. She flinches anyway. She looks down at the book again, and sees it filled with scribbles and  _ HUNGER HUNGER BETH HUNGER  _ interspersed throughout the lines.

She drops the book and charcoal with clawed hands, despair clutching at her heart at the loss of… what exactly? Her eyes go back to her hands. That isn’t right, is it? But then again, haven’t her hands always been that way?

Hungry. She’s  _ so hungry _ .

The caves. Looking up, a long stretch of tunnel greets her. She takes a few halting steps towards the caves, and this time when static fills her head, it doesn’t leave.

_ Day ??? _

There are warm bodies on the mountain. Large animals that smell like food only tastier, and her perpetual hunger is roaring to life at the smell. She creeps through the tunnels silently, the hunger driving her forward as her eyes scan for movement, her ears straining for sounds.

She finds them, and watches. The prey doesn’t see her, keeps moving instead of fighting or fleeing or freezing out of her sight like her usual prey does. The larger prey turns around, chittering at another smaller prey, gaze laughing and tone coy.

She instinctively shies away from the gaze internally, something about these animals’ eyes familiar and shameful and infuriating. The feelings are enough to shock her system, enough to keep her from eating them even though she easily can - they have no idea she is there. She hasn’t felt anything but hunger in  _ daysmonthsyearsdecadescenturies. _

They remind her of the Head, she realizes. The one she Must Not Touch. The one the Others Must Not Touch.

She must Not Let Them Touch the animals.

They will try, she knows. The Others will try to eat them. She must not let them.

She thinks she herself will when she loses control - unexplainable anger making her take the smaller animal of the two who had been like a pair of courting elk, until she abandons it in the mines when the static clears a little, ashamed at her lack of control for still unknown reasons and a flash of the Head’s accusing gaze in her mind.

She finds the other animals as they make their way into the tunnels, choosing to follow them through the mines in silence, eyes watching for the Others, and watching the strangely familiar animals as they move. Her stomach claws at her, but the Head’s power is stronger and she manages to keep her distance this time.

They Must Not Be Touched.


End file.
